


Chasing Fairy Lights

by far2addicted



Series: Fairy Dust [3]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Faeries, Because I'm incapable of writing in canon, Dream Sex, Loosely Defined Magic, M/M, Mentions of drugs, No Drugs Actually Taken, Only Shikamaru is a Detective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-08-16 17:52:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16499981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/far2addicted/pseuds/far2addicted
Summary: Neji's disappearance hit Shikamaru hard. Desperate to track down the man again before anything bad can happen to him again, Shikamaru starts searching with a fervor that leaves him exhausted and sleep deprived- that is, until he finds the note that Neji left behind, the note that proves once and for all that Neji can do things a human can't and contains clues on how to track him down. Now all Shikamaru needs is to be brave enough to chase the Fairy Lights into the unknown.**********************************************************************************************Sequel to A Childish Defense for a Grown-Up Mind and part of the Fairy Dust series.





	1. A Burning Reminder

**Author's Note:**

> This is the finale to my Faerie series, and it will be a multi-chapter story instead of a few dragged-out oneshots. 
> 
> Also, for anyone who is a fan of ShikaNeji and wants to read more things I've written, I've got a big project currently being uploaded, so you should totally check it out! * [Shameless Plug](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500230/chapters/38645621) *
> 
> Well, anyway, enjoy the next installment!

Shikamaru rubbed sleep from his bleary eyes as he reread the same page of the report for what must have been the hundredth time, though it still made the same amount of sense to his sleep-deprived brain; which is to say, none. Hoping to find some reprieve in caffeine, he swirled the dregs of his coffee and took a large swallow. The dark liquid was bitterly cold and grated against the back of his throat, irritating but doing nothing to stave off his sleep deprived migraine. With a grimace, he tilted his head back and allowed his exhausted eyes to close, but even that did nothing to call the storm swirling in his mind. 

_ Neji left me. _

Why had he left? Just because Shikamaru had voiced a suspicion about his humanity? He’d taken care of Neji, pulled him out of the mess of chains that had kept him trapped in Orochimaru’s drug ring, for God’s sake! He’d even grown to care about the ethereal man, in a way that overshadowed mere protector. 

Unconsciously, Shikamaru found himself tracing his lips with the tips of his fingers as if he could still feel the phantom pressure of Neji’s mouth against his. When he realized what he was doing, his eyes popped open with an irritated grunt and he forced himself to bend back over the stack of papers in front of him, rereading the report for the hundred and first time. 

_ Despite the best efforts of the Drug Testing Laboratories and the numerous expert opinions they have consulted, the additional compound isolated from the methyl (1R,2R,3S,5S)-3- (benzoyloxy)-8-methyl-8-azabicyclo[3.2.1] octane-2-carboxylate (common name: cocaine) in the new street drug nicknamed “Fairy Dust” has yet to be identified or replicated. The isolated compound has been successfully analyzed by the lab, revealing it to be (empirical formula, IUPAC, mass spec). However, further research is nearly impossible due to the fact that the compound is highly unstable in its molecular form and breaks down into the base gasses of carbon dioxide, water, and elemental chlorine and iodine gas only a few hours after extraction. Despite the lab’s best efforts to stabilize the compound or replicate it under laboratory conditions, all attempts have proved futile. Additionally, the compound defies classification and none of our experts can hazard a guess as to where it originated or under what conditions it might be naturally occuring.  _

Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru dropped the memo back to his desk and narrowly stopped himself from ripping it in half. It was useless, just like every other report he’d desperately read in the past week, his nerves alight with ambition to finish this case now more than ever. He  _ had  _ to solve it, he  _ had _ to prove without a shadow of doubt that Orochimaru was behind the distribution of Fairy Dust,  _ had _ to get him behind bars so he couldn’t hurt people like he had hurt Neji. And then maybe the ethereally beautiful man might come back to him. 

Dropping his head to his desk with a sigh, Shikamaru finally allowed his eyes to close. He knew that it was foolish to hope that Neji might come back to him of his own volition, but right now it was the only option Shikamaru had if he hoped to ever see him again. He knew it would take a miracle to convince Neji to come back , after Shikamaru had so callously stumbled upon his secret. 

_ “Neji…” Shikamaru threaded his fingers through Neji’s hair to push it behind his shoulder, and both of them froze when his thumb brushed along the top of the long-haired man’s hidden ear.  _

_ The top that was sharper than it was supposed to be, and perhaps even… pointed?  _

_ Everything suddenly clicked into place for Shikamaru. The way he’d never seen Neji sleep, and how he seemed to go without it for days at a time, his old-fashioned way of speaking, how he’d recovered terrifyingly fast from his imprisonment both physically and mentally, and how he never seemed to eat except for plain, uncooked fruits. Really, it had been staring him in the face for weeks, but he’d been unable to accept it.  _

_ Neji wasn’t human.  _

_ The long-haired man looked like he wanted to flee, but Shikamaru locked both arms in a vice around his shoulders, talking as quickly as he could.  _

_ “Listen, Neji, I don’t know who - what,” he corrected, watching Neji’s eyes widen at the word, “-you are, but no matter what, I will protect you. Please, don’t leave. I’m begging you.”  _

_ Neji’s carefully crafted facade started to crumble, showing the signs of the fear behind his mask. He searched Shikamaru’s ernest expression for a long time before he finally nodded. “Okay. I’ll stay.”  _

Shikamaru grimaced again as he remembered the promise, though he kept his face buried in his arms on his desk, because it had obviously been a lie. Neji had disappeared that night while he was asleep and he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since- and with hair as distinctive as Neji’s, it would be difficult to miss. He’d been a fool to think that the emotions reflected in Neji’s eyes were genuine instead of cold attempts to get him to let his guard down, but he’d wanted to think that they were real because they reflected the same emotions that were starting to grow in his own heart. And even though Neji had run away from him, lied to him and broken his trust, Shikamaru still couldn’t seem to make his heart forget those burgeoning feelings. 

Hence why he was still at the office pouring over files and memos at stupid-o’clock in the morning. 

It was a testament to how tired Shikamaru was that he didn’t notice the footsteps quietly padding across the office floor before the hand landed on his shoulder. Jerking out of his misery-induced coma, Shikamaru leapt from his chair and would have used the arm to throw the man who had grabbed him over his shoulder and pin him to the floor if he hadn’t recognized his face just in time. 

“Asuma? What- what are you doing here?” 

Asuma’s face was tightly controlled, but Shikamaru could tell his worry by the skin around his eye, which was a little more tight than normal. “I’m checking on you.” 

Shifting guiltily, Shikamaru looked down at the floor and let go of his supervisor. “You don’t need to do that. I can take care of myself.” 

“Normally I would agree with you, but Shikamaru, this has to stop. You’re hurting yourself.” Asuma grabbed Shikamaru’s shoulder, forcing him to look up into the face of one of the only men on the investigations team who was taller than him, and Shikamaru was surprised by the genuine affection and worry he saw there. “Shikamaru, I know you blame yourself for letting that boy go, but it wasn’t your fault. We never thought he’d want to leave, let alone try it. We would have given you more security if we thought that he might try something like that. It wasn’t your fault.” 

Shaking his head, Shikamaru pulled back. “You say that, but he was still our best - and only - lead to taking down Orochimaru and stopping the supply of Fairy Dust. Now we’ve got nothing to show for it and we’re no closer than when we first started.” 

“That’s not true.” Asume’s grip tightened on Shikamaru’s shoulder. “You tracked down one of his bases of distribution, and we were able to shut it down, even if he destroyed the whole place before we could find any conclusive evidence. He knows that we’re onto him, and he’s starting to sweat. You know as well as I do that the amount of Fairy Dust flooding the market has dropped significantly since then.” 

“But it’s not enough!” Shikamaru exploded, ripping away from his supervisor’s grip and pacing the tiny strip between his desk and the desks of his fellow investigators with exhausted fervor. “We don’t have enough information, we can’t follow through enough, nothing is enough! If we were doing enough, he wouldn’t have run away! He would have believed in us and let us protect him!” 

“Shikamaru.” 

At the sound of his name, Shikamaru spun around to face Asuma. “What?!” 

“How long have you been here?” 

“How long have I…?” Shikamaru cut himself off with a frown as he realized he didn’t know what time it was. “Since the beginning of my shift yesterday, okay? I know it’s late, but I’m so close to figuring this out, I can feel it! I just need a few more hours! It’s right there, it’s right at the tip of my tongue and I can  _ taste _ it, Asuma, you don’t understand! I  _ need _ to figure this out! I don’t have any time to waste!” 

“It’s Sunday, Shikamaru.” 

“What do you mean it’s Sunday-?” Shikamaru began to snap, his mouth running ahead of his normally lightening fast brain before he realized what Asuma was telling him. 

It was Sunday. The investigative team worked eight hour shifts Monday through Friday, and never worked weekends unless there was an emergency or a time crunch. Shikamaru had stayed late on a Friday night, buried himself in papers and deductions, and had lost track of time so badly that his exhausted brain had forgotten to sleep or even mark the passage of days for an entire weekend. 

A quick glance at the clock on the wall showed Shikamaru that it was still late, however, about one in the morning. It was about as long as he’d planned to stay, but he had just a little more work to do before he could go home. He  _ had _ to figure out what was in the Fairy Dust and where Orochimaru got it, so they could cut off the supply and he could track down Neji again. 

“But it can’t be-” Shikamaru gasped, only for Asuma to open up his phone and show him the lock screen, which proclaimed itself as 12:56 on Monday. 

“Actually, you’re right. It’s Monday now. Shikamaru, have you slept at all since Thursday?” 

Dropping his gaze, Shikamaru refused to answer the question. WIth a sigh, his boss dropped his phone back into his pocket. 

“ _ Shikamaru _ .” 

“...I haven’t slept much since he left,” Shikamaru finally admitted, feeling the bone tiredness seeping throughout his body at the admission. It had been almost a week since he’d opened his eyes, expecting to see Neji snuggling peacefully against his chest, and been rudely roused by the empty sheets next to him. 

“Then I’m sending you home.” 

Shikamaru jerked up to face his supervisor. “You can’t- you can’t do that!” 

“I can, and I will.” Asuma’s face was hard. “You’re so exhausted you can’t think straight. You’d be more harm than use to us in this form. Just go home and get some sleep, Shikamaru. Take the next three days… no, take the next week off. Come back next Monday when you’re ready to be a fully functioning member of our team.” 

His jaw dropping, Shikamaru grasped desperately at the collar of his supervisor’s coat. “You can’t do that to me! I’ve almost got it! I’ve almost figured it out! If I leave now, I’ll have to start all over again! You can’t… you can’t send me home…” 

His vision blurred, and Shikamaru reached up to touch his cheeks, surprising himself with the wetness he found there. His shoulder slumping, he whispered brokenly to his boss, “Please don’t send me back home. I can’t go back there. It’s so empty and cold. I can’t do it. I can’t be there when he’s not.” 

A flicker of understanding dawned in Asuma’s gaze, but it appeared to only make him more resolute. “You can’t keep running from that, Shikamaru. If he’s gone, then he’s gone. It was his choice to leave. Why are you so upset about it? He was only a witness who refused to tell us anything. He never gave us anything so important to our case that you should be this cut up about losing him.” 

He knew Asuma’s word were meant to soothe, not hurt, but that didn’t stop the pain from prickling in Shikamaru’s breast as he folded his arms around himself in a vain attempt to hold himself together. 

“...He was more than just a witness.” 

Asuma took one look at Shikamaru’s expression, at his stance and the way his arms clutched at the nothingness surrounding his body, for only a single second before his eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then narrowed. 

“You can’t be serious.” 

Shikamaru said nothing. 

“You knew him for two weeks, Shikamaru! And in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never been close to anyone! How could- how could you…?” He trailed off, leaving Shikamaru in a grateful silence. He knew the arguments Asuma was going to use because he’d been chasing them round and round his head for the past week. He was only grateful that his supervisor had left the  _ why him, why now? _  unsaid, because those were the two questions Shikamaru had been unable to answer himself. 

Perhaps it was the fact that Neji wasn’t human; perhaps he possessed some kind of Otherworldly aura that drew people to him unconsciously, and Shikamaru couldn’t help the tumultuous emotions in his body. But while he wanted to believe that, while he wanted to blame his weakness on smoke and mirrors and magic, he knew it was solely the fault of his own faulty heart. 

“I don’t know,” he finally said into the crushing silence, wiping away the last of his brief bout of tears. “I just… I don’t know.” 

“I hope you know that none of this is making me reconsider sending you home,” Asuma said sharply. “If anything, it’s only convincing me more that you need some time away from this case.” 

“Yeah.” Shikamaru felt his shoulders slump. In truth, Asuma was right, and he’d been using work as an unhealthy coping mechanism to distract himself from the pain of Neji’s betrayal. If he kept up like this, he’d be doing both the investigation and himself more harm than good. 

But knowing it didn’t make the urge to pour himself another cup of coffee and reread the memo from the lab for the hundred and second time any less strong. 

“Go  _ home _ , Shikamaru. Get some sleep. That’s an order.” 

All the tension drained out of Shikamaru’s body, to be replaced with a dull kind of ache. “Yeah. Okay.” 

Slowly, he started gathering his things up into neat piles of papers on his desk, but Asuma stopped him. 

“I’ll do it,” he said with unreadable eyes. “Get out of here.” 

So there went Shikamaru’s opportunity to steal some of the papers to pore over back at his home office. Either Asuma was getting better at outsmarting him, or he’d been telegraphing his intentions with a childish disregard for subtlety. Trying not to let his disappointment show on his face, Shikamaru grabbed his jacket and left the office without a backwards glance. 

It was probably too dangerous for him to try to drive when he was as tired as he was, so Shikamaru turned the collar of his jacket up against the late night chill and started walking home. He didn’t live that far from the station anyway, just a half an hours walk that was cut down to a few minutes in a car. He also didn’t have any desire to get home any faster than he had to. 

Despite how slow Shikamaru kept his pace, it was far too soon when the front of his house came into view. He walked up the drive, unlocked the door, then slipped inside the house, locking the door after him again. He left all the lights off, not bothering when he knew they would only exacerbate the pounding in his skull. Unwilling to go to sleep in the bed where he had last slept snuggled up against a beautiful fairy tale come true but too tired to do anything else, Shikamaru made his way to the living room and collapsed in the darkness on the couch. 

It was much lower than he anticipated, and not very comfortable. With a start, he realized that the cushion was missing, part of the pillow fort he had made with Neji almost a week ago. A pillow fort he’d been unable to look at, let alone take down, after what had happened inside it. 

In the dark, Shikamaru crawled his way to the pillow fort, careful not to knock it down as he went. But the work he and Neji had done was sound, and he was able to make it inside without it crashing down on his head. He felt like a child again, curling up in the arms of his father whenever one of the other children at school had teased him for his overactive mind. A childish defense for a mind long since outgrown such fantasies. 

It was here, wrapped up in the quilt that smelled like his mother’s mothballs and his father’s cigarette smoke, even though it had been years since he’d brought it with him when he’d move across the country from his family home, that Shikamaru finally allowed the exhaustion that had been dragging him down over the past week to pull closed his eyes and engulf him in a restful sleep. 

  
☽☾

 

It was light out when Shikamaru finally woke up, although from the grogginess in his eyes he must have slept some time and he had no idea even what day it was. Grumbling at the light steadily filtering through the tent of the blanket above him, he pushed himself into a sitting position on the couch cushion and rubbed at his bleary eyes. When he was finally able to open them again with a fitful yawn, he leaned back on his hands, only to be jerked into full alertness when his hand landed on something that crackled beneath the weight of his body. 

It felt suspiciously like paper, but Shikamaru had no idea how a piece of paper had found its way into the pillow fort, especially considering that there had been nothing there the last time he’d used it. Frowning, he took the piece of paper and crawled out into the light, still careful not to knock over the pillow fort. From his tossing and turning during his long sleep, it was looking a little worse for wear, but it still stood strong and proud, if a little saggy, when he made it to his feet, blinking in the face of the light slanting through the window to the east. 

So it was morning, but which morning? He’d fallen asleep at about two on Monday morning, but if it was dawn, it had to be a little after seven for this angle of light at this time of year, and he felt way too rested for a simple five hour nap. He dropped the slip of paper on the side table where he’d dropped his phone last night. A glance at the screen confirmed his suspicions; it was already Tuesday. Somehow, Shikamaru had managed to sleep all through Monday and Monday night, well over twenty-four hours. Not bad for someone who normally struggled to get the full recommended eight hours because his overactive mind had a capacity that far outstriped his body’s, but he’d probably needed it considering the only sleep he had gotten for the past week was fitful naps here and there that never amounted to more than a few hours each day. 

His mind was groggy in the face of the morning sun, but his body was wide away and rested, a strange sensation that Shikamaru never experienced often. Yawning once more so wide that he felt the dry skin at the corners of his mouth crack, Shikamaru shuffled to the kitchen, suddenly acutely aware that he’d subsisted on coffee alone for the two days before his day-long nap, so he was both starving and starting to feel acutely dehydrated. For once, he ignored the lure of the coffee pot and poured himself a tall glass of water as he grabbed a carton of eggs from the fridge and prepared to make himself breakfast. 

After practically inhaling a half dozen scrambled eggs with cheese, Shikamaru’s blood sugar spiked enough that his brain started functioning normally again and he suddenly remembered the piece of paper that he’d found that morning when he’d woken up. Nursing a cup of tea that he’d made - decaffeinated, so as not to make his dehydration any worse - he made his way back to the living room and picked it up, examining it. 

It looked to be just a plain piece of paper lined in college rule, folded in half and with nothing on it. With a snort, Shikamaru brought it back to the kitchen. How it had gotten there, he didn’t know, but it wasn’t important, that he could tell at the first glance. He was about to ball it up and throw it in the trash can when he suddenly noticed a line of writing scrawling across the page in pristine that would have sworn hadn’t been there before. 

_ Shikamaru~  _ The note started, and Shikamaru suddenly felt his heart beat faster as he continued to read, though he didn’t know why. 

_ Shikamaru~ _

_ I’m sorry I left the way I did, without saying goodbye. I hope you can forgive me.  _

 

The note was unsigned, but Shikamaru didn’t need a signature to recognize who had left this note. His hand shook so much that he almost couldn’t read the words printed there. Unconsciously, his lips moved as he breathed out the name of the man he’d been trying desperately to track down for the past week. 

“Neji…” 

As if the unobtrusive note had been waiting for Shikamaru to say something, to just hear the sound of his voice, more words began to appear on the surface of the paper, startling him so much that he almost dropped it. Closing both hands more firmly around the paper, Shikamaru devoured the words greedily with his eyes. 

 

_ Shikamaru~ _

_ I’m sorry I left the way I did, without saying goodbye. I hope you can forgive me. I know you were determined to protect me, but as you so rightly guessed last night, I am not wholly human. You can protect me from the trials of your world, but the trials of mine are another story. If nothing else, I hope that you believe me in this and do not think that I am leaving you out of spite. It is one of the reasons I have left this note like this, so that only your voice and touch can unlock the words, so you might be driven past a shadow of doubt to my inhumanity, the other being so that it simply does not fall into the wrong hands.  _

_ I wish to give you some of the information I would not - or rather, could not - give you while I still stayed in your presence. There are secrets I cannot breathe to another living soul, bound inside me much like the secrets bound in this paper, but I can leave them for someone else to find. I could not say before, but in truth, Orochimaru did capture me. He has long hunted my kind, using proxies to gain our trust and catch us at our most vulnerable before keeping us like how you found me, wrapped in iron chains that makes it impossible for even the strongest of us to escape. I never thought that I would fall prey to his schemes because I was one of the best and brightest of my generation, but even the best can fall prey to their own pride and make mistakes. Remember that if you chose to take this any further.  _

_ I cannot tell you much more, but I can tell you one more thing: your job is finished. The Fairy Dust, as you call it, that you were seeking to eliminate had only one source, and that source was destroyed the night you set me free. It defies description because it is made with a compound that comes from my world, but now that Orochimaru no longer has a source, he can no longer manufacture it. He has some reserves in a warehouse in Pennsylvania which he plans to slowly trickle onto the market as a commodity drug, using the scarcity to increase the price tenfold, if not more. In less than a year, the supply will deplete itself on its own, but if you wish to take your fight to him, I have included the address to the warehouse. He will not expect you to track him there so you will have the advantage of surprise, but still do not take any unnecessary risks. I do not think I need to tell you how formidable of a foe Orochimaru is.  _

 

When Shikamaru’s eyes reached the last line, the piece of paper grew hot in his hand and a spot on the back caught fire, then just as quickly went out, leaving a smudge of black soot on the white of the paper. When he flipped the page over, Shikamaru found an address in Neji’s handwriting printed on the back of the paper, this time inked into the surface with the soot from the brief but brilliant flame. Shikamaru quickly read the address, then swiped open his phone to look it up on a map. True to Neji’s word, the address was that of a warehouse in the suburbs of a small city, hidden among other larger warehouses. On his own, he would never have guessed to look there. 

A little nervous the words would disappear into flame just as easily as they had appeared, Shikamaru put the note down to write down the address on another sheet of paper for himself when he noticed that the text on the front side of the page had grown again. His heart beating faster as he laid down his pen, he flipped it over once again to read the new paragraph. 

 

_ I will say this one more time, Shikamaru: this is not your fight. Your court of law and mine cannot coincide. Your job was to stop the distribution of the Fairy Dust, and at that, you have succeeded. I will leave you with a heavy heart, but I must leave you. You must understand that no matter how much I wish to stay, and I do wish that I could stay with you for a time longer, it is dangerous for me to be so close to one as perceptive as you. Would that we had met in another time and place, in another life, perhaps we could have been friends, maybe even more, but alas, it is not so. I reiterate: please forgive me. I would not do this unless I absolutely must.  _

_ Neji _

 

Anger bubbled up in Shikamaru’s chest and he barely restrained himself from crumpling the note up in his fist. He understood Neji’s logic, but that didn’t make him any happier about it! Neji had been captured because he had allowed himself to be vulnerable in front of another person, and he was afraid to do that again in case something even worse happened. But Shikamaru had been assuring him for weeks that he was safe as long as he stayed with the police, that they would do everything in their power to keep him safe! Didn’t that mean anything to him? Did Shikamaru’s word mean nothing to him? 

Fighting his anger aside, Shikamaru took a deep breath. Regardless about how he felt about Neji’s reasons for leaving, the other man had still given him valuable information about the case. Even if he was on a forced leave of absence, he needed to get the information back to the investigative team. Maybe Asuma would even let him back into the office if they decided to follow Neji’s tip-off; they would want him on the case if they all traveled to the warehouse to seize it and anything inside. Shikamaru had to fight off a wave of relief at that thought; he would probably drive himself crazy if he had to sit around his house doing nothing for the next week. 

Shoving both the original note and the copied address into his pocket, Shikamaru threw on his jacket again without bothering to change any of his other clothes, which he had been wear for who knows how many days straight now, or even brush his hair. Shouldering open his front door, he quickened his pace until he was almost running back down the street to the investigative offices. 

  
☽☾  
  


Shikamaru was out of breath by the time that he made it to the investigative offices seven minutes later. He pushed the door open with no preamble and rushed through the staff that normally populated the front office during the daytime, the paper-pushers and those in the lower ranks of the police force. The last few offices were the ones where the team assigned to the Fairy Dust task force worked, and the faces of his colleagues looked up at him in surprise as he practically knocked down the door. Paying them no attention even as he heard them shout after him, he kicked open Asuma’s door without warning and dropped the slip of paper with the copied address on his desk. 

“This is where Orochimaru is keeping the rest of the Fairy Dust.” 

For a moment, Asuma stared at him in stunned silence, then his eyes narrowed. “I thought I told you to take the week off.” 

“You did, but-” 

“And that means no working from home, Shikamaru!” Asuma’s expression grew angry. “How did you even find this out? Who are your sources?” 

“I didn’t- I wasn’t working, I swear,” Shikamaru gasped, pulling himself up so his back was straight. He knew he looked like a complete mess, which wasn’t helping his story, but he couldn’t bring himself to care at the moment. “I found a note- Neji left me a note before he left, he just hid it in a place he knew I wouldn’t look for a long time after he was gone, probably because he knew I’d go and do something like I did. It’s his information.” 

“I see.” Asuma’s eyes narrowed even harder. “And where is this note?” 

“It’s-” Shikamaru reached into his pocket to withdraw the note, then stopped upon remembering what other secrets it contained. “I… I have it, but I’d prefer if you didn’t read it. It’s… highly personal.” 

“Shikamaru, I know that you’re one of the best minds in our unit, but you have to understand what this looks like,” Asuma sighed, rubbing his eyes. Outside his open door, the rest of their crew gathered, Sasuke and Naruto rubbing elbows as they jockeyed for position and Kiba crouching down by the floor as Shino stood above him. Further back into the press of bodies, Sakura, the only female member of their team, stood up in her tiptoes in order to capture the action. “I can’t just order a raid on a random location without enough proof to write up a warrant. If you want me to be able to look into that location, you’re going to need to give me some physical evidence I can work with, and then I can call it in as an anonymous tip. If you can’t and this is just some hunch of yours again, my hands are tied.” 

“But-” Shikamaru started to protest, then quieted. Honestly, with how he looked right now and how he’d been acting over the past week, he wasn’t surprised that Asuma refused to believe his word alone, but that left him in a delicate position. He couldn’t show him the note Neji had left, not with everything else it said. 

Uncertainly, he drew the note from his pocket, folding it so nothing but the address on the back was visible to his superior, written in a pristine hand that was obviously not his own. When Asume frowned and reached for it, Shikamaru pulled it back. 

“Isn’t that good enough?” 

“Not if you want me to send a team out to secure the warehouse, no.” 

From behind him, Shikamaru heard Naruto yelp, then he felt the note being torn out of his hand as Kiba dove past him. 

“Quit holding out on us, Shika! What kind of love note did your little boyfriend leave you?” 

“He is not-” Shikamaru protested, trying desperately to snatch the note back, but Kiba danced out of his reach by jumping up on top of Asuma’s desk. 

“Read it out loud!” Naruto hollered, which was immediately followed by another yelp as Sasuke hit him in the head. 

“He said it was private, idiot!” 

“Which is all the more reason to read it out loud, stupid bastard!” 

“Give it back!” Shikamaru cried desperately, his heart stuttering as Kiba unfolded the page and held it just out of reach unless he wanted to follow him on top of his boss’s narrow desk. 

“Not a chance!” Kiba crowed gleefully. “Now, let’s see, what do we have here:  _ My Dearest Shikamaru _ ~ Oo, that’s a zinger of an opening! Must have left an impression on him, didn’t you, Shika?” 

“Stop it, Kiba!” Shikamaru shouted, trying to seize possession of the note once more before the words hit him. When he’d read the note before, the opening had consisted of only his name. As if to mock him, Shikamaru suddenly saw another line appear on the back of the page that read,  _ By the way, if anyone other than yourself reads this note, all they will find is a heartfelt goodbye and the address I have enclosed. _ He froze at the implication just long enough for Kiba to raise the note again and start speaking after a dramatic clearing of his throat. 

“ _ I am sorry to leave you like this, but I have no other choice. I will miss what we shared together _ -” the gathered crowd broke out in titters at that line, and Kiba had to wait a moment for them to quiet before he could continue “- _ but my situation is simply too delicate to entrust it to the police force, despite how much I might trust you. You are the one ray of light in the twilight of my life, and I thank you for that. _ Awww, isn’t that sweet!” 

“Give it back, Kiba,” Shikamaru growled, although now he was only giving a token resistance since he wanted to hear the words that the page contained for everyone else but him. 

"As if! We never get to tease you!" Kiba rolled his eyes, then kept reading.  _ "However, since I do trust you to do the right thing with this information, I do know the location of the only other place where the Fairy Dust is stored besides the compound where you found me. That was the manufacturing facility, so now that it has been destroyed, you will only face a war of attrition as the supplies run out. The address of the warehouse is on the back of this page. _ " 

When Kiba got the bottom of the page, Shikamaru timed it so that he snatched the note back as soon as the last word was out of his mouth, looking like he had been trying to get it back the whole time he had been reading while in actually listening to the words for some kind of clue. Carefully folding the note back up, he shoved it back into his pocket and glared at first Kiba, who jumped down to sit on the edge of Asuma's desk, then his boss himself. 

"Is that good enough for you?" 

Asuma still looked suspicious, but he slowly nodded. "Fine. It's enough to claim an anonymous tip, at least enough to start investigating. Alright, everyone, get out of my office. Show's over." 

Grinning cheekily, the rest of the team slowly filed away from their boss's office and Shikamaru made to follow them before Asuma called out to stop him. "Wait up, Shikamaru. I want to have one more word with you." WIth a glance at the faces of the rest of the office that had turned back towards his open office door with interest, he added, "In private. Shut the door." 

Yes! Asuma was going to put him back on the case! Now he wouldn't have to sit alone at home for the rest of the week! Hiding his triumphant grin, he firmly closed the office door in his colleagues’ faces and turned to face Asuma. 

"Yes?" 

Asuma looked him over once, up and down his rumpled clothes, unshaven cheeks, and greasy hair pulled back into a high ponytail at the top of his head. "You look like complete and utter shit." 

Shikamaru had to blink. Of all the things Asuma could have started with, that was the one even his overactive mind had calculated being the most unlikely. "I feel much better than I did. I went home and just... slept, for over a full day, I think. I found the note as soon as I woke up and I didn't want to waste any time." 

"I can see that." Asuma slowly shook his head. "Shikamaru, thank you for bringing this to my attention while you're off duty, but my order still stands. You are to take the rest of the week off, no matter what the rest of the team is doing. If we raid that warehouse on Friday, we will raid it without you. I know it's not what you want to hear, but that's my orders and you can't change my mind." 

Shikamaru felt his hidden grin slip from his inner face like mud from a shining marble column, leaving an ugly stain behind. "Are you serious?" 

"Dead serious." 

"But- I-" For only the third or fourth time in his life, Shikamaru found himself at a complete loss for words. "But I found a clue! I slept for twenty seven hours straight! I'm fine! I can come back to work!" 

"You _could_ ," Asuma stressed, "but you also wouldn't be at peak performance. I know you're one of the best investigators on this team, Shikamaru, and I'd take your brain running on no sleep for a week over any of the others fully rested nine times out of ten, but this is the one time when I wouldn't. You've allowed your emotions to cloud your judgement. You need to distance yourself before you get hurt." 

"I won't-" Shikamaru tried to argue, but Asuma cut him off. 

"Don't insult my intelligence, Shikamaru. I can tell how much that man wrapped you around his little finger. And based on the contents of that note, that's not all you were wrapped around, was it?" 

Shikamaru, wisely, said nothing, and his boss stood up with a sigh. "It hurts me to see you like this, Shikamaru. I need you to rest and recover, fully recover. We can handle the rest of this case by ourselves. Don't make me remove you from it completely." 

As if he hadn't already essentially done that, by setting up a timeline for the last steps of the case and purposefully barring Shikamaru from the case during that time. Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru refused to argue with his boss and instead simply inclined his head. "I... understand." 

"I'm glad." Asuma came around the desk and placed a hand on Shikamaru's shoulder. "Look, I'm going to tell you something, but this is completely off the record. I know how hard it is to mix personal feelings and affection with a case. You think it would be easy, that you can just do things the same way you've always done them, but it's not the case." 

Shikamaru instantly looked up in interest. "Sir?" 

Asuma's gaze didn't waver as he looked into his subordinate's eyes. "I had a case once. High profile, a hardened criminal. We were investigation when all of a sudden one of the names that came up was my son." 

A sharp intake of breath sliced into Shikamaru's lungs, but Asuma continued as if he didn't notice his reaction, his gaze steady but the mind behind his eyes far away. "I soldiered on, but now I wish I hadn't. It was too hard to separate the two feelings, my affection... and my duty, which I ultimately followed. Putting someone you care for in deliberate danger is one of the hardest things a man can ever do." 

The look in Asuma's eyes grew haunted, so Shikamaru only let the silence go on for a few seconds after his speech was done before he broke it. "Sir?" 

Asuma's eyes snapped back to life, and he patted Shikamaru's shoulder one last time before stepping back again. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm trying to spare you what I suffered. I don't know the exact relationship between you two, but I can tell that you obviously care for him a great deal. Even with this note, however, he isn't off the hook. He refused to speak to us for weeks and only told us a single scrap of information which may or may not be accurate after he was long gone. If we come across him again while investigating this case, we will have to arrest him for obstruction of the law." 

Shikamaru looked away. He'd known that, of course, but in his heart he'd always hoped that either it wouldn't come to that or that Neji would be smart enough to avoid them officially from now on, despite how much he wanted to see the ethereal man again. He knew Asuma's words were intended to make him feel better, but if anything, they only made his stomach roil even harder against the food he had put in it that morning. 

"I am not punishing you, Shikamaru," Asuma said very clearly, returning to his chair behind the desk. "This is a reward for all the amazing work you've done for us these past twelve years you've worked in my division. In all that time, I've never seen you take any time off, so take some now. You could even go on vacation. Just do something - anything -besides this case." 

Shikamaru kept his head bowed so Asuma couldn't see the despair etched there. He would take a vacation if only he had someone to travel with. That's why he had never missed a day's work in the past twelve years except for when he was too sick to move. What use was there for time off when he had no one to share it with? 

"Yes, sir." 

"I'm glad you understand." The relief was palpable in Asuma's voice as he waved his hands in a shooing motion. "You're dismissed. Go clean yourself up so you don't scare the secretaries again, then go do something. It doesn't matter what it is as long as you're busy." 

"Yes, sir," Shikamaru said one last time before turning on his heel and walking out the door. He passed the eager faces of his coworkers, hungry for gossip, but he ignored them and just kept walking out the front door of the offices. 

Yesterday he had walked the short distance, but today he fished his car keys out of his pocket and drove the five minutes home, mechanically following the movements he had taken nearly every day of his life for the past twelve years. When he got home to discover that he'd failed to lock his front door behind him during his mad dash that morning, he couldn't even bring himself to care. Robotically, he followed Asuma's final order and showered, shaved, and found some clean clothes in the back of his closet to put on, though his supply was getting vastly dwarfed by the the dirty pile that was quickly outgrowing the hamper. Normally, laundry was one of his least favorite tasks in the world, right up there with doing dishes, because it was mundane and required almost zero brainpower, but today he took the hamper and dumped it into the washing machine with no preamble, sitting with his back against the vibrating machine and thinking of nothing as he waited for the cycle to be done. 

When the load was done, he switched it to the dryer and started another one with the same robotic motions, his mind on lockdown as his body performed the tasks that he normally hated. Just before he added the detergent, he went back to his room to fetch the clothes he had just abandoned to add to the wash. Checking the pockets on autopilot before he threw the pants into the machine, Shikamaru pulled out Neji's note, which he'd almost forgotten was there, and his mouth went dry all over again.

The piece of paper was now worn and crumpled from the number of times he'd folded it and shoved it in various pockets, lacking the crisp air it had once proclaimed but still holding on to something that for more intangible: the sensation of secrets. 

A drop of water landed on the page, and Shikamaru was surprised to find that it was his own tear. For the second time in as many days, he wept, but unlike before, he finally allowed himself to cry for all the emotions that were plaguing him. Great, heaving sobs wracked his body as he slumped to the floor, his arms curling protectively around his head as his nose brushed against his kneecaps, dripping snot all over the last clean pair of pants that he owned. The note remained firmly stuck between his fingers as he cried himself out, out of the way of any more damp and mucus. As his tears finally wound down, the dryer chimed the completion of its cycle, but this time Shikamaru could bring himself to follow its orders and clean it out, so he simply moved back to his bedroom and collapsed back into the bed he had last shared with Neji. 

After his day long nap the previous day, Shikamaru had thought that he would have difficulty falling asleep again any time soon, but almost as soon as he curled the blankets around himself - blankets he could almost trink himself into believing still smelled like the ethereal man who'd pressed his body against them - he found that slumber pulled him down with hard claws and refused to let go, and he was caught in an uneasy dream. 


	2. Lucid Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikamaru receives a hint in his search for Neji. A very attractive hint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a warning, this is when the story starts to climb in rating, so watch out below!

During the course of his life Shikamaru had had his fair share of lucid dreams, but the one he found himself in now was more lifelike than any he’d ever had before. He was sleeping, that he was sure of, but he was dreaming of laying in his bed all alone, his blankets kicked aside and the note from Neji clutched tight in his hand. In fact, the dream was so realistic that even though he vividly remembered falling asleep, Shikamaru had a hard time convincing himself that he was actually dreaming as the minutes ticked by. Actually, he might have come to the conclusion that he wasn’t asleep if there suddenly hadn’t materialized a second body next to his own, a body that smelled of wild and clean things. 

The hand holding the note shook as Shikamaru pushed himself up on his elbows, staring down at the face next to his that was even more beautiful in sleep that he could have imagined. All the worry and care from the days they had spent together, hidden behind Neji’s carefully constructed crystal facade, melted away to show the man he truly was, the man he would have become had Orochimaru not shattered his ability to trust others. 

Unthinking, Shikamaru reached out a trembling hand to brush aside a lock of hair that had fallen down over Neji’s forehead, but as soon as his fingertips passed within a few centimeters of the inhuman man’s skin, his eyes shot open, blurry from sleep and focusing on nothing, as his seized Shikamaru’s wrist. The pressure from his grip tightened until Shikamaru could practically feel his bones grinding together, and he gasped out in pain. Blinking to push away the blurriness, Neji’s eyes widened when he saw who it was and he dropped Shikamaru’s wrist. 

“Shikamaru! Why- how did you get here?” 

Shikamaru frowned. “How did I get here? How did you get here?! This is my dream- and if it’s not, it’s still my house!” 

“Your house? But I’m-” he suddenly broke off as he finally glanced at his surroundings and realized where he was. His eyes going wide, he sat straight up, muttering under his breath. “I didn’t think I’d made it that strong… we shouldn’t have… wasn’t supposed to actually…” 

“Neji!” Shikamaru grabbed the man’s shoulders, half surprised both when his hands didn’t pass through him like a mirage and Neji allowed the contact. “What’s happening? Are you- are you in my head right now?” 

With a sigh, Neji turned back to face Shikamaru, who finally got a good look at the clothes he was wearing. They were far more luxurious garments than Shikamaru had ever seen in real life before, flowing gossamer and silky robes of white accented with light green and hints of lilac, although not in any style he’d ever seen before as well. 

“You must have found my note,” he said, and Shikamaru nodded, the initial relief he’d felt at seeing the other man again suddenly dissolving into the anger that had been brewing in the well of helplessness and hurt deep within his body for the past week. 

“I did, but you’ve got to be fucking mental if you think that a note like that will make up for how you left me.” 

Surprise wore down Neji’s calm expression as he pulled back from Shikamaru. “I did everything I could! I needed to go, I needed to protect myself! I thought you could understand that!” 

“If you think that for one moment I thought the police force could solve all your problems after I discovered that you’re-” Shikamaru jerked to a halt, suddenly realizing that Neji never had, in fact, told him exactly what he was, then continued with reckless abandon, “-whatever you are, you’re not as smart as I gave you credit for! Keep you safe from Orochimaru, yes, exact justice for the crimes committed against you, yes, but not beat of fucking dragons or shit! If you had told me that you needed to leave, given me a reason  _ why _ , I would have listened to you, maybe even tried to help you, but instead you had to sneak away like a fucking rat in the middle of the night!” 

Shikamaru slapped a hand over his mouth when he realized he was almost to the point of breaking into tears again. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot. I should have never let you kiss me. I knew you were just using me, just trying to distract me so you could leave, but I didn’t want to believe it. I fucking hate you.” 

Neji’s face blanched even paler than normal at the accusation, and he reached for Shikamaru’s shoulder, but this time it was the detective who grabbed his reaching hand, squeezing so hard it must have hurt. 

“So what have you got to say for yourself, huh? I can’t believe you couldn’t fucking trust me enough to tell me the truth.” 

After a moment of brief hesitation, Neji ventured, “I knew you might try to stop me, but I needed to leave before… well, I just needed to get away from the police, and as much as I might trust you, Shikamaru, you’re still a member of the police. That’s why I left you the note, so you’d understand.” 

“Yeah, in a place where you knew I fucking wouldn’t be able to look at, let alone set foot in, for weeks!” Shikamaru exploded. “Real convenient!” 

Guilt swamped Neji’s features, but he still refused to back down. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t have left that note for you if I didn’t trust you, Shikamaru? Why do you think I’m here now?” 

“How am I supposed to know?!” Shikamaru exploded again. “I don’t know how your stupid magic shit works!” 

The expression on Neji’s face tightened. “Actually, we prefer the term glamour.” 

“Does it look like I give a shit either way to you?” 

“Shikamaru.” Suddenly Neji was in Shikamaru’s face, close enough that he could feel the ethereal man’s breath on his cheeks, and even though he was still angry, he found that he could no longer concentrate on the reason why. “I left you and all I left behind was a note, yes, but the way the glamour on that piece of paper works is directly tied to you. Only you can read it, and what you can read changes depending on how strongly you feel at the moment. If you had hostile intentions toward me, then you would have only been able to see the address and the first line I left. If not, you would be able to read the rest of it.” 

“What’s that got to do with anything-?” Shikamaru started to growl, but Neji cut him off by placing a hand over his mouth, and Shikamaru was powerless to remove it. 

“Let me finish. There was one more layer to the glamour, however. If, after reading the first parts of the note, you still believed me and wished to help me, the next time you fell asleep while holding onto it you would see a vision of me. The vision would be like a video recording, telling you why I had left… and that I was sorry and I missed you.” His mouth pulled down in a grimace. “But obviously I put the glamour on a little too thick, because you got the real me instead of a vision. We were both sleeping at the same time, so our dreams were pulled together.” 

“Pulled together-?” Shikamaru asked in confusion, only to cut himself off when he glanced around his room and saw that vines were starting to overtake his walls with an ivy-like ferocity. Stumbling back from the walls, he fell into Neji in the center of the bed, and the ethereal man stabilized him. 

“There was one more thing the vision was supposed to tell you, if you wanted it badly enough,” Neji whispered into his ear, forcing his head to stay forward when he tried to glace back. “It was going to tell you how you could find me, if you really wanted to help me, but only if you were going to come alone. If the glamour sensed that you were going to bring anyone else from the police force with you, it would have disappeared.”

“You could have just told me yourself,” Shikamaru rasped, feeling streaks of fire run across his skin from where Neji’s breath wafted over him and suddenly forgetting what he had been angry about before. 

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Neji murmured, his mouth moving close to Shikamaru’s neck. “I’m sorry that I couldn’t trust you enough… but I wanted to, I wanted to so badly. You’re the only person who’s ever rescued me, tried to protect me… No one ever believed I’d fall, you see; they all thought I was too strong to fail, that I wouldn’t ever need anyone. But you don’t care about that. I think you’d stand in front of me even if you had to face down the whole world.” 

Shuddering at the sensation of Neji’s lips brushing against the tiny hairs at the nape of his neck, Shikamaru gasped, “Fuck the world. I just wanted you to  _ stay _ .” 

“I wish I could have stayed, too.” 

Suddenly Shikamaru became angry all over again, and he rounded on Neji without warning, pushing him down and pinning him to the bed with both hands over his head. “You didn’t have to leave me alone!” He snapped. “Not after what you did to me! I know I don’t mean anything to you, but you didn’t have to make me let down my guard the way you did! You didn’t have to play with me like that!” 

At the accusation, pale lavender light began to collect in Neji’s eyes, and anger dripped from his voice as he spoke. “You think that you meant nothing to me? Do you honestly think that I’m so easy? I do not make it a habit to allow people I have no affection for to touch me.” 

The light in Neji’s eyes was at one impossible to look at and impossible to look away from, stealing the fight from Shikamaru’s limbs and leaving him helpless to resist when Neji broke his arms free from his grasp and pulled his head down so their lips connected. 

Shuddering, Shikamaru was helpless to do anything but kiss Neji back. As he closed his eyes, shutting out the light, the strange compulsion that had come over him before dissipated a little, only to be replaced with the real desire to push Neji into his mattress until it felt like he belonged there. The arms around his neck dragged him down until he felt like the two of them were sinking into a thick carpet of bright green moss instead of the covers of a bed. 

Worrying his teeth at Shikamaru’s bottom lip, Neji coaxed him down further, and Shikamaru was helpless to do anything but follow. As he pressed his hand to Neji’s cheek and coaxed him to open his mouth so he could command entrance with his tongue, Shikamaru felt the ethereal man shudder under him, a sign that he wa just as into the embrace as the detective was. Shikamaru was about to draw away before Neji could realize exactly how worked up kissing him had gotten him when he felt Neji moan against the seam of his lips, flexing his hips so that Shikamaru settled in between his legs, and he suddenly realized that Neji was just as worked up as he was. 

The knowledge was almost heady; this man, this  _ creature _ of some myth or legend, was laying in Shikamaru’s bed with him, and wanted him just as much as Shikamaru did. Trembling, almost afraid to touch him and soil the strange gossamer robes that he was wearing, Shikamaru ran his hand down Neji’s side, seeking for easy access to his skin but being denied by the complexity of the garment. Unable to hide a laugh, Neji pressed another teasing lick to the corner of Shikamaru’s mouth before leveraging just enough space between their bodies that his fingers could dance along the seam that ran the length of his chest, undoing the invisible latch buttons that Shikamaru would never have been able to get apart by himself. 

Catching Shikamaru’s eyes with a dark glance, Neji seized his hand and used it to push the rest of the garment to the side, baring his chest from his collarbone down to the dip of his stomach that disappeared into the bottom half of the garment, which was held up by what appeared to be another one of those infernal invisible latch-things woven directly into the garment. Shikamaru could still feel the anger simmering at the edges of his consciousness, but while being faced with the very real and very willing body of the man he’d been trying to convince himself not to dream about every time he allowed his eyes to drift shut, he found that he couldn’t care. 

He knew that his hands weren’t the roughest in his line of work, since his was mostly desk work and people like Sasuke, who was their sniper, and Kiba, who trained all their search and rescue and drug sniffing dogs, had hands with skin almost the texture of sandpaper from all the different work they did, but Neji’s hands were even softer than his, even in this dream world of half-nature, half-man made furniture. The ethereal man slipped them up the back of his shirt, leaving Shikamaru to continue his prompted exploration of the chest in front of him as Neji pulled him back down so he could kiss him again. 

The skin on Neji’s chest was as soft as the pads of his fingers, as soft as his lips and as soft as the hair that floated down over his shoulders, all for Shikamaru’s pleasure. Present there too, however, was a layer of corded muscle hidden under the softness of his skin that Shikamaru knew hadn’t been there when he’d rescued him from shipping container; it would have long since atrophied, so Neji must have been training hard to regain what he’d lost during his confinement. Gently furious, he pulled away so he could nip the column of Neji’s throat, who stilled under Shikamaru’s ministrations, hiding a tiny choked sound in the back of his throat. The sound sent a wave of fire through Shikamaru, straight to his groin, and he rocked up against Neji’s hips without wholly having control of the motion. 

He was on his back before he knew what had happened. Neji towered over him like a powerful sentinel, having flipped him over and used the new muscles in his core to keep him powerless against the bed that was slowly sinking into the ground of a clearing choked by moss and vines. The flapping sides of his garment mixed with the fluttering of his hair draped above Shikamaru as he purposefully clamped his legs around the detective’s waist and ground their hips together. The movement elicited a wordless hiss from Shikamaru as he desperately snatched at the ethereal man above him, only for his hands to grasp at gossamer lengths of cloth and nothing more. 

Protesting the loss of contact, Shikamaru whined, but the sound was soon cut off as Neji worked down the stretchy waistband of the pants he’d worn to bed. He hadn’t bothered to wear underwear, so it only took a few inches before Neji’s searching hand brushed directly against the head of his already straining erection. Despite his best efforts to control himself, Shikamaru pushed up into that soft hand, gasping for more contact. 

“Neji, please…” 

The man above him was unable to hide his pleased smile at the reaction he had gotten from Shikamaru. He reached for the button on his own pants-like garment, only for Shikamaru to grab his hand and still it. 

“I want to… will you let me…?” 

He looked down at Shikamaru, barely concealing his smirk. “You couldn’t do it last time.” 

“Yeah, but last time… I wasn’t properly motivated… I am now…” 

Shaking his head with a laugh, Neji finally acquiesced. “Fine, you can try. But it you can’t get it fast enough, you can’t hold me accountable for what I might do.” 

“Fair enough.” His hands trembling in eagerness, Shikamaru reached for the front of Neji’s pants, trying to unhook the latch-like button that was woven directly into the craftsmanship of the cloth. But like before, however, he found himself unable to find the trick of id, despite even having seen Neji do it before. 

Amused triumph on his face, Neji started, “Are you ready to concede-?” 

But Shikamaru cut him off, his expression transforming into shock, when he grabbed the front of his pants and negated the need for undoing the button-latch by simply ripping the silky fabric apart so he could delve beneath it to grab Neji’s cock, which arched willingly into his hand even as his expression transformed into one of anger. 

“You ripped my clothes!” 

Shikamaru shrugged, unable to bring himself to care when he had the silky feel of the other man’s dick sliding through his grip. “This is a magic dream, isn’t it? What does it matter?” 

“It’s not  _ magic _ , it’s  _ glamour, _ and- oh, for fuck’s sake, let’s see how you like it!” 

Abandoning his quest at Shikamaru’s waistband, Neji grabbed the color of the shirt he was wearing and ripped it down the side, completely destroying the left sleeve and pulling it apart from top to bottom. He pushed the ruined shirt off Shikamaru’s other arm, leaving him laying shirtless and in a mess of ripped fabric. 

“There! How does that… feel…” 

He trailed off as he stared helplessly at Shikamaru’s toned chest and the detective grinned at him. 

“‘Oh, no, he’s hot’?” 

Neji’s face flared completely scarlet. “Shut up!” 

Now it was Shikamaru’s turn to laugh at the other’s embarrassment, but he didn’t get far into his amusement before Neji cut him off by grabbing ahold of the dick he had dropped to get better access to his mangled shirt and giving it a few meaningful pumps. Tightening his own grip in return, Shikamaru used his free hand to move Neji’s hips closer to his so that their hands bumped together as they began to stroke each other in tandem. 

Each twist of Neji’s wrist stoked a fire quickly burning out of control inside Shikamaru, and he gasped, unable to hold his voice back as he air inside his throat shook with small moans. His face plastered with a fierce, possessive smile, Neji leaned forward and captured Shikamaru’s lips, swallowing down all the sounds he elicited with his expert fingers. Trying to replicate the flooding helplessness in his body in Neji, Shikamaru swiped the pad of his thumb over the tip of his dick and was rewarded with a shudder in response. 

Suddenly, Neji pushed Shikamaru’s hand away, and he stilled uncertainty, thinking that he had done something wrong. But Neji only linked their fingers together with his free hand as he nudged their cocks together, taking them both in one hand and stroking them together. His hand was really too small to accomplish the task, so Shikamaru helped him, his large hand sliding over Neji’s smaller one and caging their straining erections together as Neji began to rock his hips. 

The sensation of Neji’s burning dick sliding against his own was almost too much for Shikamaru, and his whole body trembled, trying to rock back and achieve some of that delicious friction on his own. But Neji clamped down with his legs and managed to keep him in place with nothing but his own body weight and the muscles in his core, forcing Shikamaru to dig his free hand into the cheek of Neji’s ass in a desperate attempt to bid him to go faster. 

But as if sensing Shikamaru’s desperation, Neji only began to rock slower, despite the indents Shikamaru’s nails were starting to leave on his ass. As heat began to rise through Shikamaru, he was helpless to do anything but let Neji control the pace of his climb, reveling in the delicious friction produced between their two bodies. Still, despite Neji’s crawling pace, the sight of the man above him drove Shikamaru wild, and it wasn’t long before he was shouting out the warning of his release a second too late. 

It caught Neji off guard, Shikamaru could tell that much as his eyelids struggled to remain more than half-open through his post-orgasam haze. The ethereal man above him didn’t drop his softening cock as he chased his own release, just kept pumping them together past the point of overstimulation until it was almost painful. But the expression on Neji’s face when he finally did come, the tiniest clues that pointed to his loss of control, was so much worth the extra discomfort that Shikamaru hardly even noticed. 

When Neji’s wrist and trembling hips finally stuttered to a stop, Shikamaru took advantage of his momentary weakness to roll them both to the side so he could pull the ethereal man close against his chest. Putting up only a token struggle, Neji sighed and allowed Shikamaru his win, laying his forehead against the detective’s collarbone. 

After catching his breath, Shikamaru whispered lovingly, “You do know that I’m still mad at you for leaving.” 

“And I still wish I didn’t have to go, but I didn’t have a choice,” Neji murmured back, pressing his lips to the skin above Shikamaru’s heart. “I wanted to stay with you more than anything, but…” He trailed off uncertainly, and Shikamaru filled in the blanks for him. 

“But you didn’t think you could trust me.” 

Neji stiffened at the accusation, trying to pull away from Shikamaru’s grasp, but the detective held him still. 

“Hold on! I’m not blaming you anymore. I understand why you… why you have a hard time trusting…  _ humans _ like me. I’m not expecting you to trust me completely without any proof.” He hesitated before continuing, his fingers tapping on Neji’s shoulder, half hidden by the garment that was clinging to his body with the barest hint of modesty. “But I think I’ve proven myself trustworthy enough that you don’t need to be afraid of me, otherwise you wouldn’t have told me the little you already have. All I’m asking now is a chance: what can I do to make you believe that you can trust me enough to protect you? How can I prove myself worthy of being by your side?” 

Neji pushed his face against Shikamaru’s chest, likely so the detective couldn’t see the flicker of emotions he was trying to hide, but he didn’t push for an answer. Eventually, Neji groaned, the sound reverberating through Shikamaru’s chest. 

“That’s what the glamour was supposed to be for! I was supposed to detect if you really wanted to protect me or if you… but it was designed to figure that out for me, make the decision for me! I can’t… I can’t…” 

He hunched his shoulders in a rare show of vulnerability, and Shikamaru pushed him away so he could look in his face, surprised when Neji dashed away a few frustrated tears before donning his mask again. 

“Just tell me what you need, say the word and I’ll do it. I’ll follow you into a fire if I have to. I just want to help you do what you need to do.” 

“But  _ why _ ?” Neji nearly whined, his eyes conveying the frustration that he wouldn’t allow to show on his face. “Why do you want to help me? How could it possibly benefit you?” 

After a long moment of consideration, Shikamaru said quietly, “I don’t know.” But at Neji’s look of panic, he quickly qualified it with, “All I know is that I want to be at your side.” 

“But  _ why _ ?” Demanded Neji again. 

“Maybe it’s because I was the one who pulled you from that container, so I feel responsible for you,” Shikamaru suggested, but his heart didn’t fully support the idea. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been solving puzzles for so long that they’ve become easy for me, and I crave the one your world represents. Maybe I fell in love with the beautiful man who shared a life with me for two weeks, and I’d travel halfway across the globe for a booty call.  _ I don’t know why _ . But I do know that if I never see you again, if I can’t know that you’re alright and that bastard Orochimaru is behind bars like he deserves, I’ll send myself straight to the loony bin.” THe corners of his lips twitched up in a wry smile. “But I’m halfway there already, so if you want me to come find you, you’d better act fast.” 

Neji had listened to his speech with wrapt but confused attention, but he pulled away at the word  _ love _ . “I don’t- my world isn’t very hospitable for people like you, Shikamaru. That’s one of the reasons I left you behind in the first place. You couldn’t protect someone like me if you can’t even protect yourself.” The last half of that statement, the  _ and then I’d have to protect you instead _ , was left unsaid, but Shikamaru still heard it loud and clear in the current running under the words. 

But Shikamaru only tapped the side of his temple. “I think you’re underestimating my intellect.” 

The frustration in Neji’s grew so thick that it started to seep out into his voice. “Sometimes a brilliant mind isn’t going to be enough to save you, Shikamaru. My world is filled with people who have powers you can’t even begin to imagine.” 

“Then let me see them!” Shikamaru insisted, grabbing Neji’s hand and placing it over his own heart so the ethereal man could hear the firm, steady beat. “I want to be overwhelmed, Neji. Let me see your world- and then let me stand in between you and those who would do you harm.” 

“I’m not a child; I don’t need your protection,” Neji snapped tersely, but Shikamaru noticed that his shoulders slumped. 

“But do you deserve it?” 

FOr a moment, Neji froze, and Shikamaru thought that the other man might hit him. Then all the tension dissolved from his body again and he melted back into Shikamaru’s arms. 

Pressing his face back into Shikamaru’s chest to muffle his words, Neji murmured, “How do you keep surprising me like that? Why do you always make me want to just lay here in your arms and let you shield me from the world?” 

“I don’t know,” Shikamaru answered honestly. “But I’d like it if we could find that out. Together.” 

For a moment, Neji didn’t move, then he reached up and kissed Shikamaru without warning. Unlike their earlier kisses, however, this one was almost clinical, and Shikamaru felt something writhe deep inside him at the sensation, something that felt green - if sensations could have a color - and tasted faintly like mint. It was eerily familiar to the swooping he’d felt in his gut the moment he’d first touched Neji’s note and seen the words begin to write themselves on the page. The first time he hadn’t thought much of it, but this second time in a row he was able to zero in on it, and he was almost certain it was the feeling of the magic - or glamour, as Neji prefered to call it - that the other man wielded with such dexterity. 

Pulling back, Neji murmured against his mouth, “I cannot tell you where I am, nor can you follow me there with no one to guide you. But I have left clues for you, and one more will appear on the note when you wake up. If you can figure them out in the next three days and make it as far as the directions the note provides, I will meet you there and guide you the rest of the way. However, on the fourth day, I will have to leave whether or not you have come, and you’ll lose any chance you ever had of finding my again. Do you understand?” 

Nodding eagerly, Shikamaru grabbed Neji’s shoulders. “Yes, of course! Where is it? How can I get there? Does it require a lot of travel? How much time do I have before I need to have it figured out to physically get there-?” 

Neji shut him up by pressing another kiss, this time a sweet, purposeful one, to Shikamaru’s still-moving lips. When he pulled back, he smiled a smile that was almost cheeky and tapped Shikamaru’s temple with his finger in a gesture mocking the way Shikamaru himself had just done it. “You’re the genius here. Figure it out yourself.” 

“But-”

But before Shikamaru could get his words out, Neji kissed him one last time, and the half-clearing, half-room that surrounded them began to spark at the seams, showing two distinct settings overlapping each other instead of a cohesive whole. 

“You said you wanted me to trust you enough to bring you into my world, Shikamaru. Well, this is the only way,” he murmured against Shikamaru’s lips. “I hope we can meet again.” 

And then he dissolved with the rest of the nature decorating Shikamaru’s room, leaving the detective to sit bolt upright in bed, waking up from the strange dream. 

Shakily, Shikamaru ran his hand down his t-shirt, ascertaining that it was still whole and not torn asunder as it had been in his dream. His pants, too, were clean, although he was still sporting a semi-erection from the events of the dream that was making it hard to concentrate. Passing a hand through his hair, Shikamaru let out a long breath and flopped back down onto his mattress. 

Even though he had been undoubtedly asleep, it hadn’t felt like just a dream. Neji’s presence had felt so real, his reactions so predictably alien, and the feel of his lips achingly familiar. Additionally, he’d revealed some extra information to Shikamaru that he knew he wasn’t crazy enough - yet - to make up himself. But he had stayed right here in his bed, and there was no indication that anything else in the dream had been real, no vines populating his walls and no moss creeping over his pillow. 

A bitter taste in his mouth, Shikamaru rolled over on his side. A note that could turn from a blank piece of paper into a heartfelt message was one thing, but a telepathic dream was a completely new set of rules. There was no way that Neji had really been here, had actually wanted him in return. It had just been another dream trying to play matchmaker with his wish-fulfillment fantasies while he had been asleep. And Asuma had wondered why he’d been putting it off for the last week. 

As he lay on his side, however, Shikamaru’s eye fell on the note that he hadn’t been able to talk himself out of bringing with him wherever he went, sitting on his bedside table. It looked the same as it always did, but with one exception. On the back side, where once there was only the words and numbers forming the address for the warehouse in Pennsylvania, there was a new string of digits. 

Sitting bolt upright again, Shikamaru grabbed the note off his bedside table and squinted at it. From the dim light coming through his bedroom window, he knew that it had to be late afternoon, which meant that he’d slept the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon away- again. But there was still enough light to read by, so he read the string on numbers on the page and frowned at them. 

_ 51.1789, 1.8262.  _

That’s all there was; there was nothing new on the paper, front or back. Shikamaru stared at them for a minute, trying to figure out what they might mean, but nothing jumped out to him as the obvious solution. 

Were they the code to a security system or a safety deposit box? The IP address to a website? Coordinates to a specific location? There was no way to tell at first glance. Pushing himself out of bed, Shikamaru carried the note into his kitchen and sat down at his kitchen table. He had solved puzzles like this before, and with much higher stakes in a much shorter time limit. Once he had explored all the possibilities, the incorrect ones would eliminate themselves until all he was left with were the correct ones. 

So her performed his ever-trusty first step and plopped the numbers into the search bar of his phone. 

Instantly, millions of results scrolled down from his search, but he only paid attention to the top few. The first was a music video named with the string of numbers, followed by two social medias, in instagram and a twitter. Clicking on the link to the twitter bio, he saw that the numbers were were set as the location of the individual, only it was spelled instead  _ 51.1789 degrees North, 1.8262 degrees West. _ Checking back on the other sites and the music video, he noticed the same notation. It was too much of a coincidence to be anything but a set of longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. 

Pulling up his GPS instead, Shikamaru typed the coordinates into the search bar and hit go. It pulled up a badly rendered three-dimensional picture of the earth and spun it before descending closer to the ground, pulling up short somewhere in Southern England. Shikamaru stared at the location for a few seconds, uncomprehending, before a snort of laughter found its way out through his nose and he dropped the phone down on the table. 

Either Neji had a more developed sense of humor than he had previously calculated and had included the coordinates as a red herring to send him on a wild goose chase, or he had just figured out the truth behind of one of England’s greatest mysteries: what happened at Stonehenge when no one was looking. 

Dropping his face in his hands, Shikamaru ran his fingers through his hair. This was insane. There was no way he could just up and go to England, not when he didn’t even know if it was the right decision! But there wasn’t anything else the numbers could be, not with how they matched to coordinates so deliberately, and the note held no other revealed clues. Still,  _ Stonehenge _ ? Could he really trust the strange dream he’d had and this one extra clue in this note enough to go galavanting across half of the world just to put himself in more danger by seeking out a society where he would undoubtedly be the weakest, a society made up of people who weren’t even human, and try to protect someone who was arguable much more powerful than him? 

Hut his heart beat faster at just the thought of seeing Neji again, and the notion of disappointing him was unthinkable. Neji had been scared, more terrified than Shikamaru had ever seen him before when he’d whispered instructions on how to find him against the bare skin of his chest. Shikamaru couldn’t just ignore him after he’d pulled down his defenses enough to offer that. He had to do the best he could to find him, if only to honor that effort he’d made. There was no choice, really: Shikamaru  _ had _ to go to England. 

Without giving himself a second chance to talk himself out of it, Shikamaru dialed his office, then the extension for Asuma’s desk. Despite how late it was in the day, long after everyone else must have gone home, he picked up on the second ring. 

“Shikamaru, this had better be good. And no, I have not reconsidered letting you back on the team yet. A break means a  _ break _ ,” he growled into Shikamaru’s ear.

“No, that’s not what I called about,” Shikamaru gasped into his phone, surprised at how raspy his voice sounded from the disuse of sleeping all day and over the entire day yesterday. “I actually… I wanted to let you know that you’re right. I think I really do need a break, and I haven't gone anywhere for a long time… so I was thinking about doing some traveling.” 

“Oh!” Surprise radiated through the phone. “Um, wow! I’m glad, Shikamaru. Go enjoy yourself. We can handle things here, and when you come back, you’ll be refreshed and ready to work and everything will go much smoother, you’ll see.” 

“Thanks, Asuma. It means a lot to me that you’re supporting my decision,” Shikamaru said, closing his eyes. Maybe in his most secret of thoughts, he was scared of going and had wanted Asuma to try and stop him, but now there was nothing left to hold him back. 

“Where are you thinking about going? Just so we have an idea about where you might be and how to get ahold of you if we need to.” 

After a brief hesitation, Shikamaru said, “Well, I’ve always wanted to visit England, so I just woke up from a nap and though… why not just do it?” 

In truth, Shikamaru had never felt the desire to visit England before, or really any other destination that required him to travel more than a few hours in any direction of his residence. Traveling was an incredibly inefficient waste of time in his opinion, spending hours and hours going somewhere when you could just skip the  _ going _ part and actually  _ be _ somewhere if you just stayed home, but he didn’t voice those thoughts and Asuma didn’t pick up on them in his voice. 

“England! Wow! That’s a bit of a trip, but… if it’s what you want, Shikamaru, go for it. You have my full support. Take as long as you need, and let me know when you get back so I can pull you back into the investigation. I’m serious; enjoy yourself, Shikamaru. God knows you haven’t been doing enough of that these past twelve years.” 

“Yeah,” Shikamaru echoed hollowly. “Thanks for letting me take my time. I might need… I might need a bit to catch up to myself.” 

“Take as much time as you need. I’d love to have my best investigator back, but I’d also rather have him back in tip-top shape in a month than have him back still exhausted in a week.” 

Shikamaru could practically feel the smile in Asuma’s tired but proud voice through the line, and he couldn’t help but allow the corners of his lips to curl up in return. “Yeah. Thanks for that, Asuma. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” 

“Work yourself into an early grave,” he chuckled. “Now go take that vacation, Shikamaru, and I don’t want to hear from you again until you’re fully recovered and ready to go back to work.” 

Shikamaru suddenly felt a little guilty for lying to his boss in the face of his kindness, but he shoved the guilt deep down inside him and burying it under the hunger to see Neji in person once again. But he only forced a smile and said, “Roger, Boss,” before he hung up and dropped his phone to the kitchen table once again. 

After shaking himself from the stupor that had started to cling to his limbs during his discussion with Asuma and the subsequent reminder of the duties he was putting aside to run across the ends of the earth for something that might not even turn out to be the right way to find Neji, Shikamaru opened the website for the local airport and started looking at tickets to England, grimacing when he saw the lengths of the flights. Getting stuck in one of those metal cans miles up into the sky for over ten hours was not something he was looking forward to, but it wasn’t like there was any other way for him to make it to Stonehenge on time before Neji left and he would lose him forever. 

Without letting himself falter, Shikamaru booked a ticket for a red-eye flight into London airport that night and stood up to shakily clean himself up and pack. If he wanted to leave in enough to make it through security before his flight, he had only a little over an hour to get everything ready before he had to leave. 


	3. Chasing Faerie Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shikamaru continues the search for Neji, growing increasingly tired and frustrated when he is unable to figure out the final clue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've had this chapter done for a few days now, I just couldn't decide how I wanted to end it! But I've figured it out now, so here you go!

The people in England drove  _ on the wrong side of the road. _

Shikamaru’s fists were whiteknucled as he drove the car he had rented at the airport through the country highways that led to Stonehenge, sitting on the wrong side of the car, driving on the wrong side of the road, and making lefts on red instead of rights. Of course, intellectually he’d known that England used a different driving metric than the United States, but didn’t mean he was prepared to actually have to deal with it! For someone as smart as Shikamaru was, he’d thought that he’d have any easy time with the transition, but in actuality the opposite was true. His overactive mind had long ago so internalized the mechanics of driving that he could do it almost completely on autopilot, and his entire subconscious was screaming at him the entire time he drove that he was doing it wrong and he was going to crash and die. 

It was a relief when the hours-long drive ended and he was able to finally get out of that death trap of a wrong car. There was only a few other people at the Stonehenge visitor center when he walked in - likey because of the colder weather starting to set in - and he was informed by a bored young woman behind the counter  that the monument was further down the road, but that only the special Stonehenge shuttles could travel there. Unless he wanted to walk, he had to wait another twenty minutes for the shuttle to arrive. 

Shikamaru didn’t want to walk, but another second in the hideous death trap that was the English system of driving on the  _ wrong side of the road _ and he was going to hurl himself out of a moving vehicle, no matter how fast it was going. Additionally, he had been informed by the bored attendant at the visitor’s center that the lands surrounding Stonehenge were some kind of protected reserve for wildlife, so he could freely walk around them to explore the area. He wasn’t planning on it, but it would at least give him an excuse for walking if anyone asked him. 

The chill ate at the back of Shikamaru’s neck as he walked the remainder of the short road to the massive stone formation. It loomed on the horizon as he approached, making it impossible to miss. As he got closer, however, he suddenly realized that it was roped off. A space of about ten yards had been created around the circumference of the stone circle, and no one could go inside. 

He immediately felt like an idiot. What did he expect, that he would just be able to walk up to one of the most famous landmarks in the world and just touch it however he pleased? Stonehenge was an important archaeological site; of course it was protected. He just had to hope that being behind the line would be enough to alert Neji to his presence. If not, he would have to do something a little more drastic. 

And probably a lot more illegal. 

The thought made the law-abiding police part of Shikamaru’s mind wince away, but he didn’t see any other option if things went that way. All he could do was exhaust every other option first before proceeding into international crime territory. 

He walked up as close to the line as he could, leaning against it and staring at the circle of stones, but nothing happened. There weren’t that many other people there, same as with the visitor’s center parking lot, but there was a guard that had started to glance at him more and more frequently as the time went on and he stayed still in one spot, so Shikamaru eventually gave up and began to move in a slow circle around the monument, hugging the rope barrier as closely as he could without falling through it. The view of the monument changed from every angle he observed it at, but nothing else changed, no tingle down his spine that gave away the presence of what Neji had referred to as  _ glamour _ or familiar voice murmuring darkly in his ear. 

Once he had exhausted every possible position around the monument, Shikamaru turned and began to walk away into the area marked for hiking purposes. If nothing had happened while he had stood there, there was no reason to try a failing task again and hope for a new result. He only had three options now: that he needed to be actually touching the stone circle or physically in the center of it, where he couldn’t go unless he wanted to break a hundred regulations or more, that the place where he needed to meet Neji was in the area but a little further out, so he needed to explore more to find it, or that he had gotten the place completely wrong. 

Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru pushed further out into the wilderness. It couldn’t be the third one. It was almost twenty-four hours since he had gotten Neji’s instructions, which meant a third of his time was already gone. He couldn’t be wrong; he simply didn’t have the time to afford a mistake. 

His feet found a thin path that he wandered for the rest of the afternoon, a little off-put when the sky began to darken much earlier than he had expected. But then again, he was forced to remind himself, it was a five hour difference between England and where he had come from, so of course it would get dark earlier. 

But that only begged the question, however, if the three day time limit Neji had given Shikamaru was tied to the hours it took him past the time he discovered the note or the physical rising and setting of the sun in the location he was in. Because if it was tied to actual ‘days’ of the location he was in, the time difference between here and his home was cutting into his depleted time even more than his jaunt to England already had, but if it was tied to the hours since he had found the note it might add the five hours back into his assets, but would it even matter since he wasn’t planning of waiting until the eleventh hour to succeed in his task of finding Neji, but what if things didn’t go to plan and he actually needed that time?

And why was he  _ thinking  _ about this and going around in circles and circles again and again when he needed his brain to concentrate and figure out the mess he was in and  _ actually find Neji instead of wondering about the specifics of the time limit? _

Swearing to himself, Shikamaru turned his feet back the way he had come and made it back to the stone circle just in time to catch the last shuttle of the day back to the visitor’s center parking lot. He rested his head against the cool surface of the window on the short drive back, closing his eyes to ignore the way the bus was  _ driving on the wrong side of the road _ and let the cold seep into his brain, finally numbing it down enough that he could think through the chatter of his overactive mind. The vibrations of the bus rattling down the road shook through his teeth, but he just loosened his jaw and let it sweep through him as he marshaled the clues he had put together thus far. 

Neji had told him to come find him. 

Neji had said that if he wanted to find him, he needed to prove that Neji could trust him. 

Neji had given him a string of numbers as a clue. 

Those numbers were the latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates of Stonehenge. 

Shikamaru had traveled to Stonehenge. 

Neji was not there. 

What was he missing? 

Aside from the obvious blunder of misinterpreting the coordinates that he hoped hadn’t happened, Shikamaru didn’t think he could have made a mistake thus far. This  _ had _ to be the right place; other than the fact that Shikamaru didn’t have the time and energy for his first conclusion to be wrong, there really was no other place Neji’s cryptic clues could have led to. Irritated, he gritted his teeth, only for a bump in the road to snap his jaw together painfully and force him to relax his face again or risk chipping a molar. 

What should his next step be? What was he missing? 

The shuttle rumbled to a stop, and Shikamaru sat up from the window, his mind still chasing itself in circles like a dog with a chew toy tied to its tail. He knew that his forehead likely had a red dot in the middle of it from laying against the window, but there were only two other passengers on the shuttle so he couldn’t bring himself to care. As he disembarked the bus, he tired to give the driver what he hoped was a thankful smile but probably came out more as a grimace. 

Shaking his head in disappointment, Shikamaru went back to the car he had rented and tried to get behind the wheel, only to grasp at air. Thrown off kilter, it took him a few moments to figure out that he was in the passenger’s seat because the driver’s seat was on the passenger’s side of the car because he was in England and they drove on the  _ wrong bloody side of the road! _

Resisting the urge to scream aloud, Shikamaru got out of the car with forced calm and walked around the hood to the passenger’s side with the steering wheel. Once he was in the right seat, he considered his options. 

He didn’t really want to go back to the monument after dark and break a hundred laws while he was at it, but it was starting to look like that might be his only choice if he was serious about finding Neji. However, if he had other choices, he should probably explore those first before putting himself on some international potential terrorist watchlist. Maybe it was time for some good old-fashioned investigative detective work. If there were any towns around here where people lived full-time - which there must be, to house tourists who didn’t want to make the several-hour trip back to the nearest city at the end of their day - then there had to be local legends and folktales that had yet to be recorded. Most of them would probably be fake or wildly exaggerated, but there was always the possibility that some of them might contain a grain of truth that he could exploit for his situation.

Slipping his hand into his pocket, Shikamaru ran his thumb along the creases of the note Neji had left him, which by now were well-worn from him reading it so often. To his surprise, shortly after the coordinated had appeared, the back of the note was soon christened with the very same passage that Kiba had read aloud to his office, the note that Neji had told him would be the only thing anyone other than him would ever be able to see on the paper. Though he hadn’t yet figure it out, he knew that there must be some reason why they had appeared. 

Shaking his head, Shikamaru pulled out his phone to look up the address of the nearest town that had an inn he could stay at, then pulled out of his parking space. The honk of a car hork behind him reminded him that he was still in England, not America, where they drive on the  _ wrong side of the road _ , and he swore at his autopiloting brain as he swung his car over to drive in the  _ technically correct but still so wrong side of the road _ . 

His hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that his nails left indents in the fake leather, Shikamaru pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road, thinking that he couldn’t  _ wait _ until this entire game was over. 

  
  
  


Shikamaru rented a room for the night, but he didn’t actually get much sleep there. Instead, he spent the night roaming around the few tiny, overpriced pubs the tiny town had and interviewing locals on any strange old folk tales about Stonehenge. Most of them had looked at him like another crazy tourist obsessed with the occult - particularly with his noticeable accent - and directed him to the gift shop in the center of the town with a roll of their eyes, but a few had actually been willing to talk to them, especially after he had bought them a few beers. Mostly, all the legends contradicted each other and there were no accounts of people using the stone circle to get in contact with any kind of Fairer Folk - not in recent years, at any rate - at least, until he had been directed to an old man in the back corner of a pub, nursing a tumbler full of scotch at nearly two in the morning. 

The man had been willing to part with a story as soon as he’d seen how serious Shikamaru was, though he’d shaken his head at his eagerness. Back when he’d been a child, he’d said, his father had been obsessed with the local legends of Faeries. He’d thought for certain that Stonehenge’s ancient original purpose had been communicating with the Faerie world, and he’d believed that he could replicate the results in modern day. He’d spent may fruitless years in pursuit of the goal before disappearing one day, and the local officials had never been able to find any trace of him, alive or dead. Most people believed that he’d just wandered too far into the expanse of the moor and fallen down into a hole somewhere that was still refusing to give up his bones, but the old man himself believed that his father had finally achieved his goal and made contact with a member of the Fair Race, only to become trapped in their world instead. 

Shikamaru didn’t know which parts of the old man’s story were scotch and which parts were truth, especially since he’d been unable to tell him exactly how his father had gotten lost in the world he believed existed on the other side of Stonehenge. But at least it told him that someone had attempted to do what he was trying to do before and succeeded at it, even if it had taken him decades like the old man had said. Shikamaru could only hope that Neji’s instructions cut out enough of the middle ground that he didn’t have to use decades to do what the man had accomplished. 

Another way it had helped him, however, was in giving him a name of what he was actually looking for:  _ Fae. Fair Folk. Faeries _ . He’d heard the stories, of course, everyone had, of the invisible people and tiny races of Northern Europe, but like most people living in a thoroughly modern age, he’d thought that they were nothing but the stuff of myth, stories ancient peoples had made up in order to explain things they didn’t have another other way to understand. Science had done away with their logical need as tokens of explanation years ago, and he didn’t know a single person who could take the stories seriously now. That included himself before he’d met Neji and seen how ethereally beautiful and strange the young man was with his own two eyes. 

When the old man was done with his story, Shikamaru bought him another glass of scotch and went back to his overpriced room, trying to get at least a few hours of sleep before he needed to start out the next morning on his continuing search for Neji. However, at about five in the morning, hazy from the time zone difference and keyed up on nerves, he just gave up and unfolded the note Neji had left him to reread it for the hundredth - thousandth - time, hoping to glean a single speck more insight from the cryptic words. 

_ The Fairy Dust, as you call it, that you were seeking to eliminate had only one source, and that source was destroyed the night you set me free. It defies description because it is made with a compound that comes from my world, but now that the sole source Orochimaru had access to has been destroyed, he can no longer manufacture it. He has some reserves in a warehouse in Pennsylvania which he plans to slowly trickle onto the market as a commodity drug, using the scarcity to increase the price tenfold, if not more. In less than a year, the supply will deplete itself.  _

Shikamaru let his head fall onto the desktop, cushioned only by the thin layer of Neji’s note. It was hopeless. He could practically recite the entire note from front to back by now. Just like the report from the lab he had poured over again and again several days prior, if he didn’t get it on the first pass, there was nothing there to get. Years of trusting his gut - little more than the instinct of his lightning fast subconscious, much faster than his torrid train of thought - had taught him that. This whole exercise was useless. 

If he couldn’t get anything else out of the note, then he needed something else for his mind to chew on so it could spit up solutions, and that meant that he needed a change of scenery. Even though it was still well before six, Shikamaru left the small inn he had stayed in for the night with less than two hours of fitful dozing under his belt and began to drive back to Stonehenge. 

It was a good thing it was so early in the morning and no one else was awake, because Shikamaru had been on the road for over fifteen minutes before he realized that he was driving on the right side of the road, not the correct side of the road. Too tired to even swear at himself anymore, he simply gritted his teeth and swerved onto the other side of the road. None of this made any sense! Where was Neji? And what was he even doing here in England? 

If Shikamaru wasn’t already aware of the fact that he wasn’t thinking clearly, he realized it again when he drove into the visitor’s center parking lot and realized that it was too early for it to be open, and since it wasn’t open, the shuttles weren’t going yet and he couldn’t just drive up to the monument. So, if he wanted to get to the monument any time soon, he needed to walk there. 

Groaning, Shikamaru let his head flop downwards on the steering wheel, wincing when the force of his forehead colliding with the horn sent a loud blast of sound into the otherwise empty and still air. But what else could he do? Sitting around in his rental car and waiting for the shuttles to start for several hours would only make him more antsy than he already was. 

With a sigh, Shikamaru got out of the car and slammed the door behind him - the driver’s side door on the  _ wrong side of the car _ \- with more vehemence than the simple action called for. Maybe the walk would clear his head. 

  
  
  


The walk did  _ not _ clear Shikamaru’s head. If possible, it only made his muddled thoughts even more tangled and impossible to sort through, even after he spent the entire day at Stonehenge without eating or resting, circling the perimeter like a rabid bird of prey that couldn’t settle on which tasty rodent to pick as its next meal. Losing track of time in his quiet rampage, it was past dark before Shikamaru realized that all the shuttles had gone back for the day and he was alone at the monument. 

Alone. Suddenly his fractured thoughts began to connect in new and exciting ways again. So far, he’d only been in the vicinity of the stones, not actually been close enough to touch them. Maybe now that everyone else had left, he had a chance to try out his other hypotheses that required closer proximity. 

His breath in his throat, Shikamaru carefully ducked under the nearest rope barrier, half expecting an alarm to go off, accompanied by a floodlight and the sound of helicopter rotors approaching from the distance, the voices telling him to back away from the cultural landmark barely legible over their rhythmic pulse. But nothing happened, no lights, no helicopters, and no people here to tell him that he was breaking the law. Holding his breath, Shikamaru crept closer to the nearest stone, his hand outstretched until his palm rested on the stone that might have once been rough, but had been worn smooth by centuries of passing time. 

Nothing happened. 

Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru pressed his other hand to the rock as well, then his forehead, then full on embraced the stone. When still nothing happened, he pulled back and surveyed the rest of the stone circle in irritation. Maybe he just didn’t have the right stone. He repeated the process to every other huge standing rock he could reach and the ones that had started to sink back into the ground, ignoring the ones that were still balanced high above his head. However, there was still no result, and finally Shikamaru stumbled his way into the center of the circle, collapsing into a sitting position and pulling his knees into his chest. 

What was he even trying to accomplish? Chasing a - he swallowed, almost unable to think the word - a  _ Faerie _ ? If he hadn’t found the note Neji had left behind and seen its undeniable magic with his own eyes, he might think he was chasing a fairy tale instead. It was hopeless. He should probably give up, expect that he was in too deep now to give up until he failed - the first failure he had ever experienced during his time as an investigator. 

Shikamaru sat there on the grass until the first rays of sunlight crept over the far horizon, and he realized he wasn’t actually supposed to be there and that he’d get in trouble if other people found him sitting in the center of the historical monument, far behind the ropes supposed to deter people like him from getting any further. Groaning as his bones creaked from sitting still for too long on the cold ground, Shikamaru stood and tottered to the edge of the circle, resting his hand briefly on one of the cold stone monuments just as the top edge of the sun appeared in the distance. For the smallest of instants, his hand tingled from some unknown power against the rock, but then light was flooding the land, leaving Shikamaru to know that it was his own imagination conjuring up false hope. 

  
  
  


During the day spent wandering around the surrounding countryside of Stonehenge and doing everything except what would make his brain work better - that is, give it the proper nourishment and rest that it needed - Shikamaru came up with a brilliant plan. He’d connected to Neji through a dream before, so why couldn’t he do it again? Of course, Neji had said that they couldn’t speak that way again, but maybe it was the key he had overlooked before. There was certainly nothing else in the note Neji had left him. 

That night, he didn’t bother going back to the Inn, even though his room was still booked under his name. No, if he slept at all, he was going to sleep under the stars, and reunite with the man who had driven him to such lengths. Instead, he just stayed hidden behind a nearby hill at Stonehenge until everyone else had left for the day, then snuck back under the ropes and laid down in the center of the giant stone circle. 

It was only here that Shikamaru realized his mistake. It was cold outside, much chillier than it had been during the day now that the sun had faded, and he only had with him a light jacket. Even if the ground was comfortable enough to sleep on, which it wasn’t by a long shot, it was covered in dew ad the chill air only made the experience even more miserable. He couldn’t have fallen asleep if he’d tried to. 

But he was committed now, and too stubborn to retreat. Instead, he simply curled up and, much like he had done the past night, tried to convince his uncompromising body to sleep, a task that was made doubly difficult by the violent shivers that wracked his body. 

Shikamaru’s watch told him that it was close to three in the morning when he finally gave up trying to sleep, uncurling from his fetal position and laying back so he could look up at the stars. How many days had he been searching now? He didn’t even know. How many days had it been since he had properly slept? That number was even more stupidly large. 

All Shikamaru knew was that he was too cold to be exhausted and too exhausted to be hungry, and that he was running out of time. 

  
  
  
  


Amazingly, Shikamaru actually managed to doze off around four in the morning, but he soon woke up with a feeling of wrongness. The ground was softly inviting, dragging him down into a layer of warmth, and his subconscious jerked against it even as his body fought to give in.  _ Just a little bit longer,  _ he thought to himself.  _ I haven’t slept… in so long… _

But his mind refused to cooperate.  _ Get up!  _ It snarled at Shikamaru, breaking the stasis that had fallen over him.  _ You need to get up right now!  _

_ But why?  _

_ Less questions, more running! We know that bad things start to happen when people start to feel warm in the cold!  _

_ We also know what happens when people start talking to themselves, but we’re ignoring that, aren’t we?  _

_ I  _ am _ you! Stop being stupid!  _

_ I’m not being stupid.  _

_ Yes, you are! Fine; I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice. If we stay here, they will find us, and if they find us, we will  _ never _ be able to find Neji! So, if you want to see him again, I suggest you stand up  _ RIGHT NOW _!  _

Shikamaru lurched to his feet before he knew what he was doing, staggering out of the stone circle and back down the road before his conscious mind was really aware of his actions. It was only when he fell and ripped a hole in the knee of one of his pant legs that his mind really caught up to his actions, which only caused him to increase his pace until he reached his car. He collapsed into the passenger’s side of the car before realizing what he had done, but he couldn’t convince himself to get out of the car again to get into the right seat, so he just leaned over and turned the key in the ignition. 

A wave of hot air blasted Shikamaru in the face, surprising him because he had known that it should be almost as cold as the air inside the cab. As it slowly grew scorching, he felt himself grow even colder until he started once again violently shivering in the wake of the heat. The blood in his extremities pounded as it awoke with a vengeance,leaving his fingers and toes feeling puffy and bloated. 

It took Shikamaru nearly a half hour of sitting in the passenger seat of the idling car to feel normal again, his fingers finally pumping the excess blood back to where it belonged and his brain starting to work properly again. It was only then that he realized what he’d almost done. It wasn’t freezing outside, so it wasn’t like he was in any danger of freezing to death, but human bodies were not designed to spend large amounts of time unprotected in weather that his dashboard told him was approaching that point. 

During this entire misadventure, bad decision had heaped upon bad decision until it culminated in Shikamaru nearly endangering himself. Even now, his head still wasn’t thinking clearly. If Shikamaru hadn’t figured out how to get to Neji while his mind was working at peak performance, he couldn’t do it as tired and washed up as he was now. 

Shikamaru watched the rising sun over the distant horizon as he decided what to do now. Eventually, unable to come up with any viable alternatives, he just reached for the steering wheel to drive back into town and get some actual rest in a safe environment meant for actual resting- only to realize that the steering wheel was on the other side of the car. To exhausted to even swear at himself, Shikamaru didn’t bother to get out of the car around go around the front bumper; he just slid over the center console and landed in the driver’s seat. As he drove back to the tiny town he had made his residence for the past few days, he met the first people coming to visit the monument for the day. 

  
  
  


Back at his small room, Shikamaru was finally able to get some real sleep, although it was fitful. He was awoken by the late afternoon sun slanting through his window, past the jacket he’d halfheartedly hung over the curtain rod to try to keep the room dark enough to sleep in. Despite getting almost ten hours of drowsing sleep, he felt even more tired than he had when he had fallen fully clothed into bed the morning before. Exhaustion pulled at every limb and muscle as he laboriously pulled himself out of bed, straightened his clothes into at least a semblance of care, and exited the room in search for coffee and food. 

Half an hour later, he was sitting in a small restaurant within walking distance down the road, staring down at one of the most English breakfasts he had ever seen. There was coffee at the establishment, but Shikamaru’s first mug had informed him that it was bitter and weak, not at all like the strong, flavorful beans he was used to, and so he’d ordered a refill of the the strongest black tea they’d had instead. 

The waitress had given him a funny look when he’d ordered breakfast during what had was normally almost dinner time, but thankfully the establishment served breakfast all day so she hadn’t refused his request. Staring down at his full plate and feeling his stomach clench around its emptiness painfully, he was reminded that he hadn’t eaten properly, and barely at all, over the last few days, but despite the hunger gnawing at his insides, he couldn’t find his appetite. Picking up a piece of toast, he stared at it for a few seconds as if he could will the nutrients into his bloodstream by the force of his glare alone, bypassing his roiling stomach entirely, but when that failed he just sighed and forced it into his mouth. It tasted like dry sandpaper on his tongue and he almost gagged at the unexpected sweetness of the jam, but he forced himself to swallow without spitting it back up; first off, it would be rude, considering the waitress was standing right there, and his stomach was complaining enough already without throwing gag reflex into the mix. 

The second bite was easier than the first, then the third was even easier, the fourth even easier, until he was shoveling food down his throat with little regard to the taste. Once the first bites hit his stomach, Shikamaru’s body realized that he had finally stopped ignoring it and woke up with a vengeance, demanding as much food as it could get without bursting. To his surprise, Shikamaru had almost cleared his plate when his body finally demanded that he slow the onslaught of feeding and let his stomach digest. 

Sighing as he sipped the last cooling dregs of his tea, Shikamaru slipped a hand into his pocket and felt the texture of well-worn paper there, long since lost all its crispness. He didn’t need to open it to see the words penned there because they were all in his mind’s eye, but he did it anyway from force of habit alone, scanning the paragraphs and letting the sentences melt into his brain. 

_ I’m sorry I left the way I did, without saying goodbye. I hope you can forgive me. I know you were determined to protect me, but as you so rightly guessed last night, I am not wholly human. You can protect me from the trials of your world, but the trials of mine are another story. If nothing else, I hope that you believe me in this and do not think that I am leaving you out of spite.  _

Shikamaru had to stifle the urge to crumble the note into a ball, not for the first time. Rereading it was useless, and yet he continued to do so! He had long since memorized every word on that damn scrap of paper, and all the clues Neji had left him were included there! How was he supposed to figure this out with so little direction? There was nothing else he had left behind! 

All of a sudden, Shikamaru’s entire body froze and he wished that he could punch himself in the face without making a scene at the restaurant as he realized something. The note  _ wasn’t _ the only thing Neji had left; it was just the only thing he had left for  _ Shikamaru _ ! Flipping it back over, he scanned the bottom of the page until he found the phrase he was looking for.  _ By the way, if anyone other than yourself reads this note, all they will find is a heartfelt goodbye and the address I have enclosed. _

Of course! How could he have missed it for so long? There were no more clues hidden in the note because there was nothing left  _ in _ the note for him to read- but there were words that he couldn’t see hidden in that paper, which meant that there could be more clues! Closing his eyes, Shikamaru tried to remember what Kiba had read mockingly off the paper. 

“ _ I am sorry to leave you like this, but I have no other choice. I will miss what we shared together _ ,  _ but my situation is simply too delicate to entrust to the police force, despite how much I might trust you. You are the last ray of light in the twilight of my life, and I thank you for that. _ ” 

Perhaps it wasn’t exact, but Shikamaru was fairly certain that the note had gone something like that, particularly the line about “the twilight of my life”. Neji wasn’t a very flowery individual, so the line had seemed odd to him at the time, and now it struck him as even odder. Why such purple prose when the rest of the letter - both the version for him and the version Kiba had read aloud - was nearly clinical in its measured prose? Shikamaru closed his eyes as he turned the words over and over in his mind.  _ Last ray of light… twilight of my life… last ray of light… twilight… last ray of twilight… _

His eyes popped open again as his brain connected the dots. He hadn’t been able to fall through whatever gate was hidden in Stonehenge, not because he was in the wrong place, but because he was in the right place at the wrong  _ time _ ! If he could only get through at twilight - more specifically, when the last rays of light were slipping over the horizon - then he’d been wandering around aimlessly for days while the answer had been directly under his nose! 

Casting a glance out the window, a shock of fear ent down Shikamaru’s spine as he realized exactly how low the sun was in the horizon. Waving over the waitress who had served him his meal, he asked is a hoarse voice that hadn’t seen much use over the past few days, “When does the sun set around here?” 

“Sunset?” The waitress asked, her eyebrows drifting up her forehead. “I guess it’d be in maybe, half an hour, thirty-five minutes max? The sun sets early this time of year as far north as we are.”

A half an hour?! Shikamaru would be lucky to even make it back to Stonehenge before then, let alone figure out how to fall through some magic portal! Cursing his uncooperative brain for giving him the answer he needed at the last possible second, he stood and threw enough money into the table to cover his bill and a little extra, then gave the shocked waitress a final nod before sprinting out of the establishment and darting into his rental car, driving away before he had even bucked his seat belt. 

He made it back to the visitor’s center in record time, but he saw by the sign at the end of the dirt road that led to the monument that the last busses had already parked back at the center. Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru punched the accelerator and tore past the sign that said “Authorized Vehicles Only”. 

He half expected a police car to materialize out of the gathering darkness behind him as soon as his wheels hit the dirt, but nothing happened as he skidded through the night. Irrational paranoia creeping over him, Shikamaru flicked off his headlights and the world around him went grey as the light from the setting sun started to fade. 

When Shikamaru rolled into the parking lot for Stonehenge, he threw himself out of the driver’s side of the car without even turning off the car or closing the door behind him. He staggered against the dirt but quickly recovered, sprinting toward the monument with a hand outstretched. 

“Hey! You there! Halt!” 

Shikamaru only pumped his arms harder as he sprinted faster towards the monument, hearing the man curse behind him as he slipped under the rope for the monument. Trust the guards not to have left yet the one time he actually needed to get close to the monument. He thought briefly of pausing to “explain” to the guard how badly he needed to get to the circle, but a quick glance up at the setting sun quashed that idea; he didn’t have enough time to safely knock the guard out before trying to break through whatever veil led to the world Neji was in. Besides, with as poor care he’d taken of his body the last few days - well, weeks, really - he probably wasn’t in the condition to take him, and he had no idea what kind of weapons British forces were equipped with. A single hit from a taser, and he’d be down for the count. 

“I said stop! You can’t go there! Freeze or I’ll be forced to use violence!” 

Gritting his teeth, Shikamaru ignored the gaining footsteps of the guard behind him and darted through two of the massive stone pillars to stand in the center of the circle of stone. Raising his arms to the sky, he shouted, “I’m here! I’m where you asked, when you asked! I don’t know what else to do! Help me! I’m here for you!” 

Shikamaru heard the guard mutter, probably into some kind of radio, “Shit, he’s a crazy one. Trying to commune with the aliens or something. Damn it, I hate it when this happens.” 

Ignoring him, Shikamaru squeezed his eyes shut and screamed up at the sky. “NEJI!!!” 

The air around him crackled with energy, and he opened his eyes to see the light of the sun slipping down over the horizon. Despair crawled through him that he had lost, that he had failed, but he forced it down. He still had a few seconds left. Maybe he needed to touch one of the standing stones, or all of them, or- 

Something large crashed into Shikamaru’s back, and he realized with a jolt that the guard he’d been ignoring had tackled him from behind, forcing his open mouth to bite into the dirt. Spitting out his mouthful of grass with a disgusted expression, Shikamaru used one of the moves he had been trained to do when immobilized from behind - a mixture of elbow jabs and a core spasm that flipped both of them over - and quickly broke free of the surprised guard’s grasp. Pushing himself to his feet as quickly as his exhausted and abused body could muster, he darted toward the nearest stone fell toward it with both hands outstretched, touching the cold exterior. 

Nothing happened. 

Shikamaru felt the urge to cry out in despair, but he quieted it and moved to the next stone. All the while, the guard was recovering from the blow Shikamaru had given him and staggering to his feet, and the sun was slipping further and further down the horizon until only a glimmer remained. 

The air crackled again, drawing Shikamaru’s attention to a smaller, broken standing stone that he had missed before. It was on the other side of the circle, but it seemed to glow from within by an absence of light. Normally he would have dismissed such observations as the fantasies of a tired mind, but today he threw himself across the circle again without a second thought, sprinting right past the surprised guard, who took off hot on his heels again. 

“Hey! Where do you think you’re going?” 

Shikamaru tried to push himself to outpace the guard, but his flagging body finally failed him as his ankle turned in a divot in the ground just feet from the stone he had been aiming for, and the guard grabbed him around the waist again, this time immobilizing him on his feet with his hands trapped at his side. In the distance, he could hear the sound of more cars, likely reinforcements, coming up the trail that led to Stonehenge, and Shikamaru squirmed in the man’s embrace, kicking backwards until he connected with his captor’s kneecap and the man let him go with a pained grunt. 

Shikamaru tried to sprint forward the last few feet, but his buckled ankle failed him, sending him sprawling. Eyes squeezing shut, his arms came up to shield his face from smashing into the stone as he fell toward it with nothing to stop him. 

Except he never felt the impact, but when he tried to open his eyes, all that confronted his vision was a wasteland of dark that sparkled with intermittent shards of energy. And then, as soon as the veil had it appeared, it parted before him again, and he fell through the other side. 

And directly into a pair of familiar arms. 

“Shikamaru?!” Neji gasped, looking down at him with shock plainly written on his face. “You.. you actually made it through? You really figured it out?” 

“I told you I would,” Shikamaru said with a lazy grin, suddenly and poinently realizing how exhausted he was and giving up all semblance of control over his own body to Neji. “I… told you… I wouldn’t give up…” 

“That you did,” Neji whispered, letting his forehead sink down to rest on Shikamaru’s. “And I’m sorry for ever doubting you, about any of it. I’d… I’d trust you with my life, now.” 

“You don’t need to trust me with that,” Shikamaru said softly, his fingers digging into the silken material of Neji’s shirt. “Just trust me enough not to leave me again.” 

“Never,” Neji vowed, a small smile pulling up the corners of his lips. “You’ve proved yourself to me already.” 

“Enough for you to tell me the truth? About who you are?” 

Neji’s eyes darkened for a moment, then he nodded, letting go of Shikamaru and extending a hand. “Follow me.” 

The air around them was strange, and through the darkness of a time past twilight, Shikamaru couldn’t really see their surroundings. Still, Neji had been here and waiting for him all this time, so he took the man’s hand without hesitation. 

“I’ll follow you anywhere.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might have noticed that this story is now marked complete. I decided that with the other projects I've got going on, I can't keep up with another long, drawn-out multi-chapter thing, so I'm ending this here and the story will be continued in two seperate long one-shots. Look out for them in January!


End file.
